The Talking Drum

by Lisa Braxton

  Bernadine pulled the blinds open wider to get a better look. “She’s trying to get the child in the car, and the little girl is raising a fuss, kicking, punching her in the side.”

  “I wonder what’s the problem,” Martin mused.

  “Temper tantrum,” Bernadine answered. “Sydney had them all the time when she was two or three. Just about drove her father and me nuts.”

  Sydney thought about Della’s invitation to come by to see her workshop. She didn’t know if Della was being sincere or simply polite. She would hold off on following up. Besides, she didn’t want to endure another one of Jasmine’s explosive tantrums.

  She exhaled as she went back to the kitchen for a pitcher of lemonade and drinking glasses. Bernadine and Martin had surprised her. They called her from a shopping trip they had taken to Filene’s Basement in Boston’s Downtown Crossing. They wanted to drop in to see her on their way home. She was on her own with them. Malachi had agreed to sponsor a Liberty Hill Little League team, and the new intern, Lawrence, had gone with him to watch the team practice. From there they planned to stop at the hardware store to buy a drill and handsaw for work Malachi wanted to do on the third floor.

  “Nice place. Solid,” Martin said as he wrapped his knuckles on the mantle. “Nice wood work too.”

  “Old buildings do have their charm,” Bernadine said as she let go of the blinds and joined her husband on the couch. Her hair was perfectly coiffed as always, her high-heeled strappy taupe sandals complementing her periwinkle pant suit. She carefully picked up an hors d’oeuvre between long, lacquered fingernails.

  Sydney thought her mother and stepfather looked odd together—Bernadine, whose skin color was deep toasted brown and Martin’s, chalk white.

  Sydney poured them both some lemonade. “Can I get you anything else?”

  “No, we’re fine,” replied Martin.

  Bernadine smoothed a lock of hair behind her ear and looked furtively at her husband. “We might as well get on with this.”

  “Can you sit?” Martin asked Sydney gently.

  Sydney’s mouth went dry. She sat on the edge of her chair opposite them and felt the urge to wring her hands, but she resisted.

  “We want to know what’s going on,” Martin inquired.

  “You’re supposed to be back in class next week,” Bernadine said, raising an eyebrow.

  Sydney looked from Martin to Bernadine. “But Mother, we talked on the phone. Remember?” She hated it when her voice cracked. “You said it was fine that I wasn’t going back to school.”

  When Sydney finally spoke to her mother the evening Malachi returned from campus with Lawrence, she had braced herself for her mother to argue with her about taking a year off from the university. She had expected Bernadine to insist that Sydney get back to campus immediately to resume her studies and to see Malachi on weekends. Bernadine listened to her daughter recite her plans, and had said, “If that’s what you want to do, so be it.” Then, a rushed “Goodbye. I will speak to you soon.” And that was it.

  It was strange that her mother hadn’t ranted. Sydney began to think that she was finally getting through to her mother—that she was an adult, capable of making adult decisions. Now she realized nothing had changed.

  “Of course it’s not fine,” snapped Bernadine. “It’s not fine at all. I didn’t want to talk to you about something that serious over the phone. That’s why we’re here.”

  Bernadine reached for another hors d’oeuvre, but then pulled her hand back. “I was afraid of this,” she added curtly. “Once you married Malachi I knew you’d have second thoughts about being away from him—and law school.”

  “You’re halfway through,” Martin piped in. “You only have a year and a half to go. Surely you can hang on for the rest of it?”

  “I’ve already talked to the dean,” answered Sydney, forcing her voice to be calm. “They’ll reserve my spot for another year.”

  The sound of hammering outside filled the silence in the room.

  “I just mailed your tuition check for the next semester.” Bernadine’s voice was cracking.

  Martin took his wife’s hand and squeezed it. “I’ll call Roger from Rotary. He works in the bursar’s office. He’ll take care of it before it’s cashed.” He looked at Sydney. “I don’t know what to say. Ian said the other day that he’s got an internship spot ready for you at the firm next summer.”

  Attorney Ian Hoffman was a partner at a small corporate firm in the Berkshires and Martin’s squash partner.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Sydney said in a firm, quiet tone.

  Martin waved his hand in the air. “I’m sure he’ll be happy to have you there whenever you’re ready.”

  “And after one year, you’ll go back?” asked Bernadine.

  “That’s my plan, Mother.”

  Bernadine pulled a tissue from her purse and dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “You know what I’m thinking about,” she said to Sydney, her voice shaky.

  “I know, Mother,” Sydney responded in a quiet voice. “I know.” Sydney knew that part of the reason Bernadine wanted Sydney to finish law school had to do with Sydney’s father. Bernadine was keeping her deceased husband’s memory alive partly by encouraging her daughter to fulfill his dream of Sydney becoming a lawyer as he had been.

  Bernadine took a long sip of lemonade. “I’m trying to look at the bright side. At least you’re not quitting.”

  “It’s just a one-year leave to help Malachi start the business,” said Sydney. “Then I’ll get back to the books.”

  Martin walked over to the picture window. “This is a rough neighborhood, you do realize that, don’t you?”

  For a moment, Sydney considered telling them how she really felt, how she clutched her purse every time she left the house by herself. How she rushed to the car to outrun robbers who might be hiding in the bushes. How she woke up in the middle of the night to the sounds of the house settling, fearing it was a burglar. How she felt fear even with Malachi in bed next to her assuring her that they were safe. How she was afraid all the time even though they had an alarm system.

  She wanted Bernadine to reach out with both arms and let her cry on her shoulder. A hug from Martin would have been reassuring. They would never say they told her so. But in the end Sydney could only say, “Of course I know how the neighborhood is.”

  “A lot of illegal activity is going on in the streets,” Bernadine said.

  “On our drive up here we saw two men on motorcycles ride up to a car parked a few doors down from here,” Martin said. “One handed a package through the driver’s window of the car and then the passenger got out and hopped on the back of one of the motorcycles. The three of them took off down the street.”

  The hammering had stopped. Now someone was using a drill. “What’s changed, Mother?”

  Bernadine shifted in her seat. “What do you mean?”

  “You didn’t sound this concerned when we talked about the neighborhood on other occasions.”

  Bernadine looked at Martin and then back at Sydney. “Well, that’s because we thought you weren’t going to be here that often. You would be staying with us, Malachi would come out to visit, and I figured you’d come here to Bellport only on a few weekends when you had time off from school. I was concerned before, but now that you’re going to be staying here full-time, I am even more worried.”

  “I picked up a newspaper on our way in,” Martin said. “Somebody’s on the loose setting fires.”

  “That’s in Petite Africa,” Sydney responded. “That’s not here.”

  “That’s less than ten minutes away,” he continued. “Too close. What’s to stop the arsonist from coming this way?”

  “Martin’s right,” Bernadine added. “He could come to this neighborhood too.”

  Martin turned away from the window. “That’s Malachi down ther
e, him and a young man. They’re getting something from the car.”

  The three of them got downstairs just as Malachi had resumed drilling holes near the top of the doorway. Lawrence stood by with a canvas bag full of tools and handed Malachi a lamp that Malachi screwed into the porch wall, aiming it toward the walkway.

  “When I’m done, we’ll be able to see anyone coming up here after dark,” Malachi said as he tightened the screws on the floodlight. He installed another one at the far end of the porch by the stairs leading to the basement.

  “And Miss Syd,” Lawrence said, “You can put them on a timer so they’ll go on and off when you want.”

  Sydney turned to Bernadine and Martin. “See? We’re taking precautions.”

  CHAPTER 11

  UNCLE MUSTAPHA POSTED the “closed” sign on the door of Le Baobab. It was eight o’clock. No customers had shown up for dinner. Omar was disappointed. He would get no pay and no leftover mechoui, the slow-roasted lamb shank with herbs, which Uncle had planned to prepare. But he had reason to feel relieved that Uncle was closing early. The old man had a heart condition. He should rest and not work so hard. He looked tired. Omar noticed his uncle shuffling around the restaurant lately instead of strolling from table to table and greeting customers as he usually did. The bags under his eyes seemed etched permanently on his face. He feared that the fight over eminent domain was wearing Uncle down and making his heart weaken.

  As he was walking down Wheeler Avenue past Hallima’s on his way home, Omar thought about the herbs and their failure to entice Natalie into bed with him. Then he tripped on the plastic sandwich board advertising that day’s salon specials that had collapsed on the sidewalk. Through the display window he noticed that lights inside were still on. Hallima, in a flowered smock and matching pants, gripping a broom, was sweeping the back of the salon. He picked up the sandwich board and knocked on the display window. Hallima turned around and saw him. She frowned. “We are closed for the evening,” she shouted.

  He held up the sandwich board. Her eyes softened. The hinges on the door squealed as she opened it. “Thank you. My niece forgot to bring this in.”

  He held the sign just out of her reach. “We need to have dialogue.”

  She crossed thick arms over her chest. “About what?”

  “The services you provide.”

  She looked him up and down, stopping at his head. “You can come back tomorrow when the barber is here, but I don’t think you need a shape-up yet.”

  “I am not here for that. You sold me the zepis.”

  She looked behind her in the salon and then back at him. “Come in.”

  It was the first time he had entered the salon through the front door. Hallima’s salon was the size of a small variety store, narrow and deep. Shampoo bowls and hair dryers were in a row on the left. Styling stations and a barber’s chair were lined up on the right. Black, plastic styling capes hung on a coat tree. Light calypso-sounding music floated through the air, as did the smell of burned hair.

  He stood in the waiting area. A small coffee table in front of the row of chairs had copies of Ebony and Jet magazines stacked on it, along with copies of Khadim’s favorite, Black Confections.

  A young woman, probably a teenager, sat in a styling chair holding an oversized mirror to her face and plucked at her eyebrows with a pair of tweezers. Hallima barked something at her in what Omar recognized as a Ghanaian dialect. Hallima waited until the teenager left and then turned back to Omar.

  She put the sandwich board under the front counter. “I only sell the zepis at the back door. You are not to come to the front to buy it.”

  “Is it because you don’t want everyone to know that the herbs that you sell are useless?”

  Omar suspected that Hallima was a fraud. In his village, Fama and his father’s other wives used herbs to entice Ibrahim. The wives always seemed to get more frequent visits to their huts when they did this. Hallima’s herbs had had no effect on Natalie.

  She shoved a mirror, tweezers, and bottles of hair products into a lower cabinet of one of the styling stations. “I receive no complaints about the zepis. You are the first. Did you crumble them in the food like I said?”

  He followed her into the far end of the store, where she was turning off the stereo. “I did everything you said.”

  She looked down at his crotch and smirked. “Maybe you do not have what it takes to satisfy a woman. The zepis can do nothing about that.”

  Omar could feel his face getting hot. He forced himself to remain composed. “I want return of my money. Twenty dollars I paid you.”

  She stood on tiptoes, reaching up for the metal cord to stop the ceiling fan. “You are wasting my time.”

  “I shall not leave until I get my money.”

  She went to the waiting area to tidy the stack of magazines. When she finished, she looked up at him. “Then I guess you will stay here all night.”

  They locked eyes. Finally, Hallima offered, “I will not give you your money back, but since you are not satisfied, I will give you another formula.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She pulled a set of keys from the pocket of her smock and opened a box on a shelf underneath the cash register. She handed him a jar that looked much like the one he had already purchased.

  “You think that I am a fool?” he asked.

  “I sell this one for ten dollars more. It has all the herbs of the other one but also maca and yohimbre. You should have success with this.”

  “At what price do you think you will rip me off again?”

  She held up her palm. “I am not charging you. It is on the house. If you do not like it, I will return your twenty dollars.”

  When he got home, Natalie was in the bedroom with the door shut. He turned on the television in the living room. As he flipped channels, he stopped at the sight of Duke Ellington. The musician was on a variety show running his fingertips up and down the keyboard of a grand piano. Omar sat down on the couch. It was good to catch a glimpse of his musical hero. He went and got the framed photo of Ellington on the wall in the drum room and compared it to the man he saw on the TV screen. Ellington looked much older now. His eyes were baggy, like Uncle Mustapha’s. His hair was grey and he needed a haircut. The hair at the back of his head had grown so long that it was curled into a strange-looking flip. Omar wished he could call the TV station to talk to Ellington, let him know about his struggles with his drumming career. He turned down the volume during a commercial break and lay down on the couch, facing away from the TV, his face pressed into the cushions.

  Whenever he thought of Duke Ellington, he went back to the day in 1965 when Ibrahim had made the big announcement. “Doom,” Ibrahim had said, using the Wolof word for child as a term of endearment for the eighteen-year-old. “A big celebration is coming to Dakar. Kings, emperors, and presidents from all over the world will come to The Festival of the Black Arts. Some of our lost African brothers in America will be there, too, including the great American composer Duke Ellington. He will perform his famous ‘Satin Doll’.”

  Omar knew all about Ellington’s music. Ibrahim had played his albums on the gramophone in their hut. Sometimes Ibrahim used his wind-up radio to listen to Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dizzy Gillespie.

  In the months before the festival, Omar and the other drummers spent almost all of their time practicing. The longer Omar played, the more alive he felt. The drums had a language that made him feel peaceful. Ibrahim’s wives sat in the courtyard and created outfits—lengths of cloth covered in strips of calf skin that the drummers could wrap around their hips, beaded and tasseled arm and shin bands, feathered headdresses, boubous of various colors. Just for Omar, Fama made an indigo boubou with gold trim and a matching cap.

  Before the trip, Fama took Omar to see a marabout, a holy man, two villages away, who prescribed Omar a gris gris for good fortune. T
he marabout placed the amulet, containing writings from the Quran, around Omar’s neck.

  Months later at the festival, on the day that Ellington emerged from Amity Arena with President Leopold Senghor, Omar stroked the soft leather of the gris gris with a sense of satisfaction. He, his father, and the other drummers had performed every day since the festival opened, hoping to catch a glimpse of their country’s president and the famed American musician. Senghor walked past Omar and the others with his bodyguards. Ellington stopped where Omar was drumming and stood so close to him that Omar could feel the sleeve of Ellington’s suit jacket against his arm. A bright light went off in Omar’s face. A man with Ellington had taken their picture. He watched the man tip the camera forward and let the burned flashbulb, now purplish and swollen, fall onto the ground. The man put more bulbs in the silver hood—one at a time—and took more pictures.

  Now, all these years later, he still couldn’t believe he’d had his picture taken with Duke Ellington or that the famed musician had talked to him after the drumming performance and told him that he had talent. Ellington secured for Omar a four-year scholarship to attend Howard University as a music major, and promised to showcase him at one of his performances once he graduated. Months later, a box arrived from the United States containing autographed photos from Ellington, a typed letter on university letterhead welcoming Omar to the graduating class of 1971, and a one-way ticket to America on a ship departing from Dakar. Ibrahim sat a distance from Fama and Omar in Fama’s hut as they looked over the contents of the box. Omar went to his father. “Papa,” he said, “America is for you, not me. You are the one who listens to the American jazz musicians. If not for you, Papa, I would not even know about Duke Ellington.”

  “Doom,” Ibrahim replied, “you are the one who shall go to America. In some years, you will become the drumming ambassador of the world. You will spread the true African culture to the world through drumming.”